


time after time

by lacecat



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:00:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7958008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacecat/pseuds/lacecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In most lives, they don’t recall each other, or don’t know each other long enough for it to matter.</p>
<p>(But in some, they do).</p>
            </blockquote>





	time after time

•••

 

The first time they meet, it’s in a quiet town in northern Europe.

 

 James is the son of the local leader, a carpenter by trade. It’s a quiet town, with not much excitement beyond the occasional visitor, and James wakes up every morning and knows that his life is confined to this land.

 

 John is a traveler who has come in to seek shelter form a storm, or so he claims. The man wears strange clothing, but he speaks their tongue with ease. He accepts their offer of food and drink, and like a moth to a flame, James is drawn to the stranger for some reason.

 

 Late at night, John spins tales of faraway lands, of spices, merchants, elephants, James can’t help but be transfixed by the blue-eyed stranger seated near the fire. During a particularly outrageous story, he snorts at one of John’s overdramatic pauses, and is surprised when blue eyes snap to his instantly.

 

 Not one to cow under another man’s gaze, James holds his look, until a brief smile, smaller and much more genuine than previous smirks, breaks through on John’s face.

 

They share a moment, as fleeting as it is, and as James watches the man finally break his stare to continue with the story, he can’t help but feel as if a significant moment as passed.

 

The next morning, John has left the village, and there’s a strange knotted feeling beneath James’s breastbone, as if he has imagined the stranger to be someone more.

 

But then it passes, and he tries his best to forget about the man. He tries and fails for the rest of his life.

 

He can never forget those eyes.

 

 

•••

 

 

In the next life, James is much older. He is the master of a group of slaves, hardened by years of disappointment and battle. Once enslaved himself, he is used to the coarse ways of the fighters, making him a brutally efficient rival, and he does well in train them to fight in the arena for the Romans’ benefit. 

 

Sometimes, when he lies awake at night, he dreams of running a blade through his own master’s throat, buying his freedom in blood even for a few brief moments. But in the morning, he still bows his head when the man walks by, for he knows that he is only destined for a life kept captive. 

 

John is one of the new captures the villa brings in, and he had been on a boat for many months, evidenced by his tanned skin and rough hands. His name suggests that he is from the northern isles like James, but his quick reflexes and steely eyes suggest that he has survived more of the horrors that this life can bring than any man should.

 

In this life, John is quicker, colder, more aggressive, and when his eyes meet James’s over the clash of metal swords, he does nothing more than flick his eyes to one of James’s weakness, pinpointing how exactly to take him down. 

 

They don’t ever speak outside of battle. But when they are in the arena together, they are an unstoppable force. They cut down many champions before one of the masters decides that there can only be one true victor of the sand, pitting them against each other. 

 

As John stabs him in the side, his eyes are expressionless, and his movements are quick and impersonal. 

 

James can feel the blood gurgle in his throat, and he falls back, his eyes closing on those piercing eyes, wondering if he will find happiness in the next life. The roaring cheers of the crowds fade away as he takes one last breath. 

 

(What he doesn’t know, is that after John watches James die on that sand, he only lives for another few weeks. He meets his end at the hands of a Syrian gladiator, and for some inescapable reason, he sees green-blue-gray eyes as he dies with his arms outstretched). 

 

 

 

•••

 

 

In most lives, they don’t recall each other, or don’t know each other long enough for it to matter. 

 

Once, their only encounter is to brush hands in a crowded tavern. James doesn’t look to see who he bumped into, but John stares after the red haired man, can’t help but to feel like he has met that man before. He can swear he’s met him before, perhaps in a dream.

 

He doesn’t go after him.

 

 

•••

 

 

One of the most passionate encounters they have, James remembers. 

 

They are in Venice at the peak height of the Renaissance. James is an artist, much softer than in his other lives. John de Silva is Spanish-born, making his way through Italy with no money in his pocket. 

 

They meet when one of James’s fellow artists invites him to sketch this new male model. As James tries to focus on his art, capturing the straight lines of his torso, the bone that juts out at his hip, John turns all of his attention on him. 

 

He decides he rather likes the way that James’s hair catches the light, surrounding his face with a fiery red color unlike anything he has ever seen before. When John offers to come back to James’s studio for a private session, the man agrees just a tad too hastily to be inconspicuous, and John’s smile spreads slowly over his face, his eyes hooded and nearly obscene as he looks up and down the other man’s body. 

 

They fuck that night, James’s hands grasping John’s hips with hands still covered in pigment, John throwing his head back onto the pile of canvas they found themselves on. 

 

James mouths at John’s neck, licks his way down to his collarbone, and John gives an even more enthusiastic moan. “It’s like my body knows yours,” he gasps, and James can’t help but to kiss him again at that, his hips thrusting up into John’s. 

 

They are together for months, longer than previous lives. James’s art flourishes, he paints better with John as his muse, and John relishes in posing for him during the day and warming his bed at night. 

 

Sometimes James dreams of bloodied sand and smoky rooms. It happens with increasing frequency, as if the more time he spends with John, the more vivid the dreams become. 

 

“Do you think reincarnation is real?” He asks John once, when they are panting and covered in sweat. “What if we have actually met in previous lives?” 

 

John rolls on his side, smirking. “You do not need to charm me with honeyed words, mi amor,” he says, his voice slightly hoarse from their activities. “What is this sudden philosophy?” 

 

James lightly swats him on his hip, turning to face him more as well. “I cannot help but feel as if we are connected in some way, beyond this plane,” he continues in a low voice. “When I look at you, I can’t help but to feel that I have known you for a long time.” 

 

John reaches out to touch the side of his face, and they kiss deeply. James soon passes off the dreams as some sort of wild creation his mind makes.

 

Their relationship, however, is not just gentle voices. John is selfish from years of looking out only for himself, and James is just naturally stubborn, angry when his art is rejected from galleries. When they do argue, it turns vicious and brutal, and one day, James hurls a glass at John’s back in his fury, missing him narrowly, and John storms out of the studio to drink his pain away. 

 

In retaliation to that particular incident, John steals one of his paintings, and flees into the night. It was one that James painted early in their relationship. On the canvas, John is sprawled out on a heap of dark green cloth, his limbs long and elegant. His face is turned slightly towards the viewer, illuminated by a tall window in the background in rosy hues. His blue eyes shine behind long dark curls, and the scattered paintings in the background give the work an intimate feeling. It’s one of James’s favorites, and John takes it because he is bitter, his heart broken. 

 

He keeps the painting with him, until he can gather the courage to go back to his lover. That is, until he discovers one rainy August day that James has been arrested and executed, his work considered indecent and blasphemous by whatever authority. His paintings have supposedly all been burned, all evidence of the man erased.

 

In that moment, John becomes a dead man walking. He continues on, but a part of him died along with James. 

 

He keeps the painting for many years, until he is very old. He hides it in the rafters of his home, away from the prying gaze of his wife and children, and dies soon after. On his deathbed, he wonders if James was right all those years ago, if they truly were reincarnated, and would love each other one day in another life.

 

 

•••

 

 

Sometimes they meet at very different stages of life, and their relationship is impossible. 

 

In one lifetime, John marries James’s sister. They spend little time together, but James remembers John from the life in Rome. Even though he knows in that life, he died at the hands of this man, he can’t help but to be drawn to him. 

 

They spend many years darting just outside each other’s grasps, their interactions limited to dinner parties and hunting trips. 

 

Then a wave of illness passes through the estate which James’s family lives in, and both die within days of each other.

 

 

•••

 

 

One of their happiest lifetimes, they are young boys when they meet. They are in an orphanage, and at night, they distract each other from the gloom with whispered stories and children’s games. Their relationship is innocent, yet no less deep, and both dream of escaping those walls and moving out of the city, perhaps to a farm where they are free men. 

 

It’s also one of their briefer meetings, as they eventually leave the orphanage separately (James is older, leaves several years before John is able), and never find each other outside of those walls.

 

 

•••

 

 

Then they are pirates in the golden age of piracy. Their relationship is torrid and intense, born out of necessity and both good and bad fortune. 

 

James is world-weary, his heart broken and shadowed by the time they meet, and John discovers the taste of the power he can hold, and it both thrills and disturbs him how he can use it. 

 

“There may be no one closer to you in the world than I,” John Silver tells James Flint from across a fire, and even as their conversation on the upcoming battle continues well into the night, James is struck by those words.

 

After the battle, as they stare out from across the pond at each other, James makes a choice, that if it means his ruin, he take whatever he can get from this life. 

 

They are together that night for the first time, and it feels just as thrilling as when he first slept with Thomas and Miranda, John’s mouth on his, his body an insistent weight on top of James. When he comes, it’s with John thrusting up inside of his body, and James sees white behind his eyelids, slumping on top of the quartermaster. Their bodies are foreign to each other then, but it still somehow familiar, like coming home after a long voyage. John finishes soon after, clutching James’ hips with a moan that spills from his lips like a desperate prayer. 

 

Their relationship goes beyond physical, of course, and when James realizes that John Silver will indeed be his end, he accepts it as the inevitable conclusion, the consequence to this element he has surrendered his heart to. 

 

They are powerful men, even more so when united in cause, and their relationship, however shadowed, only strengthens their tie. 

 

Some time later, they are lying together in Miranda’s old home, a refuge from the horrors that are in Nassau right then. It’s rather domestic, not that either would admit it outright, and it is then that John first brings up his dreams. “For some reason, I feel as if we have known each other in previous lives,” he says in a quiet voice. 

 

James watches his face, illuminated by the soft candle he lit before they retired to bed. “You mean in metaphor?”  


The quartermaster gives a frustrated exhale. “No. The scenes slip away from my mind before I am able to remember them too well in the morning, but I have vivid scenes play out.”

 

The captain’s mouth quirks. “So I am in your dreams, I see,” he says, teasing, and John gives a snort. 

 

“Right. They’re not always quite _us,_ however. You’re this painter in one, from long ago, and I have to say, it’s not a bad look for you.” 

 

James rolls on top of him, then, kissing the base of his neck. “A painter, you say? And what are you, some wanton model,” he said with a grin pressed into the other man’s skin. 

 

John tilted his neck up, giving the captain more flesh to kiss. “Ha- something like that. We fucked in that life too, I think,” he said, rolling his hips up as best as he can, stump cushioned by the blankets tangled at their feet. His cock perks up in interest as he grabs James’s ass with both hands, squeezing not too gently. 

 

The captain’s hands creep up his sides, smoothing over bare flesh. “Is that so,” he breathes out, before John rolls them over, and they forget about the dreams for a while. 

 

But their happiness is not to last. Once the British are chased out of Nassau, they find that with James McGraw long dead at this point, Flint cannot survive without the turmoil of war. He decides to leave for the Americas, where he could be removed from the legacy he has spent over a decade cultivating.

 

Long John Silver, on the other hand, has found that the power he yields, the name that has made the entire New World fear him, to be what he has craved. He has a choice, his happiness or his name. 

 

He doesn’t follow Flint.

 

Years later, when Silver discovers that the great Captain Flint has succumbed to the drink in Savannah, his heart hardens. He finds some comfort in his wife, in the tavern they run, the life they build together, but it’s never the same as those long nights in the Barlow house. 

 

Sometimes he dreams of him, not in past lives, but the man he knew and loved. Even as he retires from the pirating life, he still yearns for the open sea, and the man he stood beside.

 

 

•••

 

 

They meet again and again in countless numbers of lives, each time their circumstances different, the times and places varied. 

 

Slowly, they separately realize that they may be doomed to be constantly searching for each other, and in the life times that they meet for more than a brief interlude, they are always ripped apart. 

 

“Like Orpheus following Eurydice into the underworld,” James mused, taking another drag of the cigarette from where he’s propped up on the bed. 

 

It’s 1924, and they’re in New York. James “Flint” is a veteran turned illegal bartender, nicknamed for his hard gaze. John found his way to New York, drawn by the promise of a life of wealth from speakeasy money. They both occasionally do some dirty work for the mafia, where they first met in a haze of absinthe and jazz one fateful night. 

 

John knocks his foot against Flint’s from where he’s stretched out, perpendicular to his lover’s body on the bed. “Didn’t she get out? I’m not fresh on my Homer.”

 

“Ovid,” Flint corrected. “And she didn’t. He looked back, and she was forced to return to the Underworld. He spent the rest of his days lamenting his loss, until Zeus struck him with lightening.”

 

John winced. “Jesus. Are you saying that I’m the Eurydice to your Orpheus or something?”  


Flint studied the plumes of smoke that drifted up towards the ceiling. Below them, he could hear the quiet thrum of the bar, people dancing and talking. “I’m saying it seems that we never seem to know each other for too long before we’re separated.” 

 

John sits up, his muscles shifting under his skin in a way that makes Flint’s mouth go dry for a moment. “So what, we’re doomed to be unhappy? Maybe this time, we’ll end up all right, doll.”

 

“Maybe,” Flint concedes, but wraps a hand around the back of John’s neck so he can drag him in for a kiss, not wanting to think about death for once. 

 

John smiles against his lips, then bites down on his lower lip. Flint moans into his mouth, and John leans back to take the cigarette from him. He inhales, then leans forward to breathe smoke into Flint’s mouth. 

 

Flint’s hands clutch at his hips, grinding them slowly together, and it’s good, too good. 

 

In that life, John ends up dying first. One night, their bar was raided, and the police are all too trigger-happy. While Flint is being handcuffed, John makes a strange motion, perhaps to grab at the gun, or perhaps just to steady himself, and the sergeant shoots him right there in the bar. 

 

Flint _screams_ , the sound anguished and caught in his chest, and only is silenced when the same sergeant smashes the butt of his gun in the back of his head.

 

In his cell that night, Flint purposefully picks a fight with one of the nastier-looking criminals. It’s all too easy, and as hands wrap around his neck, he hopes that the next lifetime will be luckier.

 

 

•••

 

 

But they were never lucky, were they?

 

 

 

•••

 

 

The next life, they’re both fighting in the trenches between France and Germany, part of the British invasion to reclaim the land. 

 

“Fire!” Lieutenant McGraw orders, keeping a calm exterior as he watches his men die. He’s screaming on the inside, has been since the beginning of this goddamn war. 

 

After the shots fade away, when night has fallen, they’re all pressed into the cold earth. It’s too dangerous to light any fires, so they sit in pitch black darkness, waiting for either reinforcements or for the Germans to bomb them. 

 

They’re too wired to sleep, and he is faintly surprised that they are still alive by the time dawn comes. The pale light filters into the trenches, and as they have no current orders to move on the enemy lines, McGraw allows the men to rest for the next few hours.

 

He watches them, too alert himself to sleep. Before he realizes what he’s doing, he stares at one of his soldiers for a long time. Silver, if he can recall the name correctly, meets his eye, face equally grim.

 

Then his face slackens with surprise. “James?” the man breathes out. The men around him pay him no mind, but McGraw jerks his head away, not even minding the insubordination.

 

A shadow falls across him, and he looks up again, just in time to see Silver slide down next to him. The man looks at him, determined, and there’s something in his eyes that gives McGraw pause.

 

“Pardon me, but we know each other,” Silver says, his eyes not entirely different than the color of the dawn sky. “I wasn’t sure of it before, but just now, I remember.”

 

McGraw scoffs, suddenly feeling far too tired to chastise him for the address. “I’ve never met you before in my life. Get back to your station.” 

 

“But you have met me before,” the man presses on. “Thrace? New York? Or even Nassau?”

 

The words stir something in him, but McGraw turns angry eyes on him. “Get back to your station, soldier.” 

 

Silver relents, but McGraw can feel the weight of his gaze on him for the rest of the day.

 

That evening, the orders come through to move into the no man’s zone, and McGraw knows that it will be a massacre.

 

They do surprisingly well considering their lack of ammunition, even managing to destroy one of the German tanks. Shooting one of the operators, McGraw turns his head just in time to see the Germans use one of their machine guns on their dwindling numbers. 

 

He hurries back into the fray, just in time to see Silver’s knees buckle ten yards ahead of him. Something comes loose in McGraw’s chest, and he crawls forward, the sound of bullets flying over his head fading into background noise. 

 

He remembers then. 

  
_No no no no no-_

 

Silver’s mouth is bloody, and he gives a grimace. McGraw puts a heavy hand on his chest, trying to stop the bleeding, but it’s no use. 

 

“You- you-” Silver tries to choke out, but the lieutenant dips his head close to his. 

 

“I remember you,” he says softly, anguished, and Silver’s lips curl up into a smile before his eyes half-close, his gaze turning cloudy. 

 

“Until next time,” McGraw tells him, tears welling at the corners of his eyes, as Silver’s chest stops moving.

 

 

•••

 

 

The next lifetime, they meet each other while they are still young, but it’s not for long. It’s 1981, and they meet in an airport in Los Angeles. 

 

Flint is on a business trip, connecting between Japan and England, and Silver is an exchange student from Cambridge heading to UCLA for a semester. They meet in the airport bar, flirt outrageously, and Silver follows Flint to his hotel room. 

 

They separate after their encounter, both bearing dark bruises that will make both of them remember their encounter fondly. 

 

In the next few years, Flint is killed in a car accident, leaving behind no one in this life.

 

In Los Angeles, Silver gets sick, before they know of the epidemic soon to come, and dies in a hospital, alone.

 

 

 

•••

 

But perhaps they don’t need luck to be happy.

 

 

•••

 

 

It’s 2016, and James Flint is late for a meeting with a buyer. 

 

He hurries into the elevator as soon as the doors open, trying to comb his hair back into something slightly less hasty-looking. He’s been working for weeks to get this sale through, with both the seller and buyer being incredibly difficult to work with.

 

The painting that they’re exchanging, however, is what has hooked Flint. He’s never fully seen it, due to the paranoid seller believing that someone will try to forge it if its image is made public. Before law school, he had majored in art history, and always had a fondness for Venetian art, however. 

 

The elevator stops, and a dark-haired man walks onto the elevator. “76, please,” he says in a casual tone, glancing at Flint. “Ah, I see you’re headed there already.” He’s British, like Flint, and although Flint tries not to notice, he’s attractive in a charismatic way.

 

Flint keeps his eyes straightforward as he makes a sound of assent.He had no time for flirting. The man rocks back on his heels, and even starts to obnoxiously whistle. 

 

The remaining floors pass quickly (and too slowly, to Flint’s impatience) and Flint walks out first.

 

He hears the man follow him, and he turns the corner towards the office. To his surprise and annoyance, the man continues to follow him right up to the meeting room.

 

“Well then,” the man drawls, and Flint turns to face him fully. “You must be the lawyer. John Silver,” he says with almost a leer, his eyes dropping down and back up again. 

 

Flint nearly flushes, but remembers to be professional. “James Flint,” he bites out, “And you’re late, even if you are the buyer.”

 

“Still a pleasure to meet you, though,” the man replies, to which Flint has absolutely no answer to, choosing to open the door instead.

 

The seller is already in the room, a weaselly-looking man, and he glances between the two of them. 

 

The painting is on the table, covered in a black cloth. Flint’s hands itch to uncover it, an irrational urge to satisfy his curiosity, but he resists.

 

The final paperwork is quick, and as Flint hands each of them their copies, John Silver and the man shake hands. Silver then rises to go over the painting. “Let’s take a look, shall we,” he murmurs, and uncovers the painting. 

 

There’s a beat of silence, and Flint has to look up, seeing the painting for the first time. 

 

The painting is uncharacteristically simple for Venetian art, but by no means any less breathtaking. It’s a nude of a young man sprawled out on green felt, his eyes hooded. Some of Flint’s formal arts training filters through his mind, as he takes in the expert chiaroscuro, the detailing of the young man’s hair catching light from the background. He looks comfortable among the folds of the fabric- not posed, but instead almost vulnerable, as if he was well used to being in that setting.

 

Flint knows exactly how much John Silver has paid for this painting, but in seeing that painting, it is priceless.

 

Then the memories come filtering through, oil paint on his palms, blood, gunpowder, bits of cigarette ash- 

 

and Flint _reels._

 

He didn’t realize Silver had stepped so close to him, but then he suddenly saw blue eyes, just like the ones in the painting behind him.

 

“James,” the word falls from Silver’s mouth, and it’s both too little and too much. He can only stare back at Silver, at the man’s equally astonished, pale face.

 

“You know each other?” The seller asks, but when they pay him no attention, he huffs and leaves the room. Flint can’t bring himself to care in the least. 

 

“I’ve seen you die so many times,” Flint whispers, as if his words will shatter this moment. “I don’t know if I can go through it again.”

 

“Maybe-” and Silver’s hand finds his, somehow, and Flint’s whole world has tilted on its axis- “this is our lucky time. This feels different.” 

 

His words are true, as Flint cannot recall a time that one of their previous lives had ever materialized in front of them like this painting. But a dark part of him remembered a night when they had both acknowledged that they may just be the ends of each other, forever dying and searching. 

 

But maybe not. 

 

Flint steps forward, and they meet in the middle naturally, their mouths desperate. Flint can taste tears on Silver’s lips, doesn’t know if they’re his or Silver’s, but he clutches at his face, losing himself in that moment.

 

That night, they undress each other carefully in Silver’s apartment. Silver’s hands spread over his chest, as if marveling at the smooth, scar-free skin there, and Flint’s own hands wrap around his waist, his shoulders, his head, as if he could keep him whole in this moment. 

 

Even though Flint still arches into his touch as Silver knows exactly where to touch him, and Silver shakes in the same way when he comes, they both each hope that this time, they have found each other, and that this life will be the one they can live out together, not cut short by tragedy or choice. 

 

The next morning, Flint makes them thick coffee, and they drink it together in bed, legs touching. The painting lies across the room, not yet mounted on the wall.

 

Later that day, Flint moves all of his possessions into that apartment. Silver shows him the empty spaces on the bookshelves, that somehow he knew to keep empty all this time, and Flint begins to stack books on it. 

 

His hands brush over a copy of _Metamorphoses_ , and he puts it in the corner, next to _Meditations._

 

Silver is smoking outside on the balcony, watching the sun set in the distance, the sky mottled violet and pink. 

 

Flint slides open the door to join him, and he smiles, stubbing his cigarette out on the painted railing. 

 

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Silver tells him.

 

 

 

•••

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  



End file.
